Women-led MSME registrations jump 75% in FY22; this many units registered on Udyam portal
Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: As of March 22, 2022, 78.16 lakh MSMEs were registered on the Udyam portal since its launch on July 1, 2020, of which only 13.68 lakh MSMEs were led by women.
In FY21, 4.9 lakh women-led MSMEs had registered on the Udyam portal.
Ease of Doing Business for MSMEs: The number of women-led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) registered on the Udyam portal has increased by 75 per cent in the financial year 2021-22 even as their share in the total registration count was only around 17 per cent. “The number of women-led
MSMEs registered on Udyam Registration Portal has witnessed a substantial
increase,” said Minister of State MSME Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma sharing data in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha on Thursday. Around 8.59 lakh women-led MSMEs had registered in FY22 (up to March 28, 2022) in comparison to 4.9 lakh registrations in FY21.
As of March 22, 2022, 78.16 lakh MSMEs were registered on the Udyam portal since its launch on July 1, 2020, of which only 13.68 lakh MSMEs were led by women while 63.77 lakh were led by men, as of March 22, 2022, according to the data shared by MSME Minister Narayan Rane in Rajya Sabha. The total registration count, at the time of filing this report, on the portal was 80,16,310 including 76.27 lakh micro units, 3.53 lakh small, and 35,904 medium enterprises.
The number of women-MSME registrations on the portal reflected the overall low share of women enterprises in the MSME sector. According to the MSME Ministry’s annual report for 2021-22, out of 6.08 crore unincorporated proprietary units, 79.63 per cent were led by men while only 20.37 per cent were led by women entrepreneurs.
Moreover, in terms of public procurement as well wherein the government has earmarked 3 per cent mandatory purchase of goods by central public sector enterprises (CPSEs) from women-owned units, only 0.87 per cent procurement amounting to Rs 1,000 crore was made in FY22, as per data from the MSME Sambandh portal. Nonetheless, this was the record high procurement by CPSEs from women-led units as purchases for the previous years had remained under
0.50 per cent. The overall procurement from micro and small enterprises during FY22 was worth Rs 39,034 crore, benefitting 1.73 lakh MSMEs in comparison to only 7,737 women-led MSMEs that benefitted from public procurement during the year.
Meanwhile, the MSME Ministry last month had launched the Samarth scheme for existing and aspiring women entrepreneurs. The scheme offered 20 per cent seats in free skill development programmes organised under skill development schemes of the MSMEs Ministry to women along with 20 per cent participation of women MSMEs in MSME delegations sent to domestic and international exhibitions. The scheme also proposed a 20 per cent discount on the annual processing fee on NSIC’s commercial schemes, the ministry had said in a statement as it targetted to benefit over 7,500 women MSMEs under the scheme.
